Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

Josh Rogin is a long-time foreign affairs journalist, currently a columnist for the Global Opinions Section of the Washington Post. He’s also a Political Analyst for CNN. 

That phrase - going to the movies - that shared experience in a movie theater full of strangers already makes me nostalgic, like listening to vinyl records. Before the pandemic, the movie theater business was an 11-billion dollar industry in the US alone. In 2020, there were approximately 40,000 screens in 5,798 theaters that employed over 115,000 people. Then, of course, in March of 2020, like all communal entertainment experiences, they were all shut down. Netflix, Amazon and Disney, which were already increasing their market share of the movie experience, replaced movie theaters overnight. But as we crawl out of the pandemic to a post-corona world, will the tension build to return to the movies? Right now, we are seeing early signs of a market for the sanctity of the movie theater experience. To help us understand the history of the film business and where it goes from here, post-corona, John Podhoretz returns to our conversation. He’s been a prolific film critic for over four decades. John is editor in chief of Commentary Magazine and host of Commentary’s award-winning daily podcast, he’s a columnist for the New York Post, a book author, and was film critic for the Weekly Standard and television critic for the New York Post. Are movies as we’ve watched them for the past century — over? Were movie theaters already in decline and the pandemic simply accelerated the race to the inevitable? Or are we itching to get back out… to go to movies?

The price of college has been skyrocketing over the past few decades, escalating far higher and faster than the rate of inflation. According to one study, the cost of tuition at many schools is up by well over 1000% in less than a half century. For what? What about the product offering has actually changed? That’s a question that came into sharp focus as millions of students last March flocked to Zoom University...overnight.As recently as three years ago, one of my favorite business school professors, the late Clay Christensen, predicted half of all colleges in the US would close some time this decade...that their business models would be unsustainable and would be disrupted. And, then, of course, there was the pandemic. So, was Clay Christensen right? 

Before joining The Times, Maggie was a reporter at Politico, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. She’s a lifelong New Yorker. According to a profile piece about Maggie, she’s written or co-written more than a story a day, and stories with her byline have accounted for hundreds of millions of page views last year alone. That’s more than anyone else at The Times.  

To learn more about 'Vaccination Nation' visit startupnationcentral.org

Jim is the former editor of Popular Mechanics, where he helped reposition that century-old brand to become a major voice on contemporary tech issues. He currently co-hosts the How Do We Fix It? podcast and is working on a book about man-made disasters. Previously, Jim was executive editor at National Geographic Adventure.  He’s the monthly tech columnist for Commentary Magazine and is with the Manhattan Institute, the most important urban policy think tank in the U.S. 

In addition to 60 Minutes, John  recently published his third book, the New York Times Best-Seller The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency. John’s a long-time and award-winning television and print journalist. He was previously co-anchor of CBS This Morning. Before that, he was the anchor of “Face The Nation”. John is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic and co-host of Slate’s “Political Gabfest” podcast and host of the Whistlestop podcast. John has also moderated presidential debates. And was a long-time correspondent for Time Magazine, where he covered the White House.

Bret is a Pulitzer Prize winner and an op ed columnist for the Times, where his column appears Thursdays and Saturdays.Bret is the author of "America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder". He was raised in Mexico City, he has studied at the University of Chicago and  the London School of Economics. In recent years he and his family were splitting their  time living between New York City and Hamburg. 

As we post this podcast, the US has vaccinated about 7.6  percent of our population, The UK is at 11.7%. Canada and Germany are hovering around  2.5 percent, France is at 1.7 percent, and Israel is at Over 50%.Scott and I have been talking, and he has laid out a pretty interesting take on how we’ll quickly hit a tipping point on vaccinations, when we won’t have a vaccine supply problem, but a consumer demand problem, meaning not enough people lining up for the vaccine. Scott also has insights into the new variants, what a gradual post-corona return to normalcy could look like, and perhaps most concerning - what we have learned about future national security risks from viruses as bio-weapons?

We’ve had a public health shock, followed by an economic shock, followed by a civic and societal shock. An emerging crisis in public security looms over the Coronavirus era… here in New York City, and in cities across the country.Is the connection between the breakdown in public health and the breakdown in public safety causation or correlation? Was this crime wave inevitable and Covid simply accelerated it? What do we need to do to bring basic safety back to our cities?